


Engineer Ships

by DeckofDragons



Series: TF2 Shipping Challenge (With Some Bonus SpyDad) [8]
Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Engineer POV, Fluff, M/M, Shipping Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-14 17:00:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 4,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19277590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeckofDragons/pseuds/DeckofDragons
Summary: A one shot for each Engineer ship.





	1. Demo - War

“Man, how’d we manage to stalemate for a whole _week_ straight?” Demo asked as he and Engie settled for a round of after-battle cards in his workshop this time.

“Don’t know.” Engie’s main job was defense and area denial. He did it well and put all his focus on tending to his buildings and watching for the enemy Spy. Thus, he didn’t know what the rest of the team was up to most of the time let alone what might be causing them to stalemate so much.

“It sucks.” Demo’s frustration was understandable and something Engie felt too. They got paid more for wins, enough to make a noticeable difference in their paychecks when they lost or stalemated multiple times in a row. A whole week straight was going to really hurt, especially if it carried on after the weekend break. “This whole damn war is a stalemate though so I guess it makes sense.”

“Well, I don’t know about the overall stalemate but I think I might got an idea that’ll maybe get us some more wins.” Engie had been waiting to reveal this idea tomorrow since he’d be finishing it over the weekend but now was just as good.

Demo looked up, interest peaked. “Really? What is it?”

“A smaller more portable sentry that don’t take as long to set up properly, like my mini sentry.” He flexed his mechanical hand under his glove. “But this one shoots explosives instead of bullets.”

“That’s fucking genius mate,” Demo said with a chuckle. “The more stuff’s exploding, the better.”

“I knew you’d like it. But uh… it might not actually make much of a difference.” They already had Solider and Demo shooting explosives everywhere, what difference would a small gun spewing rockets make? The surprise of it might be the biggest advantage it gave them. “Then again, it might be big, who knows?”

“I want to see it.” Demo put down his cards as he stood, grabbing his beer bottle off the table while he was at it. “Show it to me.”

Engie grunted as he stood too. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t like showing off his inventions, especially to Demo who always appreciated them.

He pulled it out from underneath his workbench and placed it on top. Without prompting, he explained how it worked. Demo nodded every now and then, occasionally taking a swig of beer too as he listened.

“It’s perfect,” he said when Engie was done. “We’ll spook them with it for sure and finally fucking win for once. They won’t know what hit them.”

“That’s the plan.” The element of surprise was a very important factor in war. Unveiling the mini-sentry had given them a clean winning streak for a solid two weeks before the enemy got used it and shortly after unveiled their own mini-sentry.

Demo bent down gave him Engie a quick kiss on the check, jolting him back to the present. “Now let’s go back to cards, huh? I still got to make up for how badly you beat me yesterday.”

“You were drunk,” Engie said with a chuckle as he followed Demo back to the desk. “You don’t even remember it.”

“Yes, but I know I’m a hell of a lot poorer than I was before we starting playing yesterday. I’m going to beat you today and win it _all_ back, ‘kay? And then on Monday we’re going to take your new baby out and blow some blue dudes to smithereens.”

“Whatever you say partner.”


	2. Pyro - Rainbow

The picture Pyro had drawn of his ‘happy place’ was colourful. Rainbows filled the sky and a couple unicorns that looked like they’d been filled up with helium floated about. There were giant lollipops sticking out of the ground, perhaps meant to be trees? More rainbows were drawn on the ground in the shape one would normally draw fire it, signifying that when Pyro called fire ‘pretty rainbows’ he meant he literally saw it as pretty rainbows.

Engie lowered the picture to look at Pyro again, sitting next to him on the bed. He’d taken off his suit and mask to explain this and show Engie the drawing of what he meant. A big act of trust on his part that Engie couldn’t help but feel flattered by.

“So this is what the battles look like for you?” Engie asked, gesturing to the drawing.

“Yes.” Pyro nodded. “And that’s okay? You don’t think that means I’m… broken… right? That… I need to be fixed?”

“No, of course not.” If Engie had to guess he’d say that no one on their team was fully all there in the head. _He_ certainly wasn’t, he’d had Medic saw off his hand so he could equip himself with a mechanical hand. And he’d let Medic keep that hand to experiment on. Not something he regretted by any means but also not something a fully sane man would ever do. So they were both insane in two different ways. As long as they were happy in their insanity who cared? “It’s fascinating actually, could you tell me more.”

Pyro paused as if that were the reaction he’d expected the least. Thus, he started explaining his view of the world slowly, hesitate as if still worried about possibly being judge – implying a past filled with people who weren’t as kind to him as he deserved. But Engie’s genuine interest and questions soon had him speaking with much more confidence and excitement about what everything was, how he got into the state, what it felt like, etc.

Engie had never heard him speak so much at once before. He was clearly very excited to finally share it with someone who was interested. And it was _very_ interesting. Engie’s main area of passion and expertise was engineering but the mysteries of how the human mind worked had its own allure as well. And he just liked listening to Pyro talk passionately about things and learning more about him in general. It was a rare treat, Engie was going to enjoy for however long Pyro had stuff to say about it.


	3. Medic - Feathers

Engie wouldn’t describe his workshop as ‘clean’ by any stretch of the imagination. There were bits and pieces of various projects, some failed or given up on for now, some in active progress, all over the place. And there were just parts of stuff that might possibly be useful one day littered about as well, typically in boxes stacked haphazardly in the corners. So he’d be a hypocrite if he judged Medic harshly for the state his lab was in. But at the _same_ time…

“Shouldn’t this place be uh… more sterile?” he asked, cringing as he looked around at the mess. The most striking thing of all was the birds, Engie hadn’t known Medic kept them in the lab as he’d only ever been in the lab proper when he was unconscious. There were uncleaned bloodstains too and medical equipment, some of it covered in dry blood, left about. “I mean, you’re supposed to perform surgeries in here.” Wasn’t this how infections happened? An unclean environment during a surgery.

Medic looked up from where he was stacking papers on his desk, doing little to reduce the chaos. “It _is_ sterile,”

“ _Really_?”

“Yes.” Medic nodded. “Or at least, it’s good enough for me. All that stuff the media says about needing a perfectly clean environment is mostly hogwash. Just don’t rub mold or dirt directly into a wound or surgical opening and it’s fine. And besides, the birds are clean. I set up a birdbath in the corner, they use it almost every day. _And_ after that time when Archimedes got stuck in Scout I always double check to make sure the birds are out before sewing my patient back up. I even remove any feathers that might’ve fallen in.”

This man was the team’s _doctor_. How the hell were they all still alive? How did not a single one of them have any horrible infections? And… this was also the man Engie had fallen for. Which wasn’t hard, Medic was the first person Engie had ever met with a comparable intellect to his own. It was true the other way around as well. It’s what made them the perfect match.

“ _And_ ,” Medic continued with a groan after the pause. “I always clean my tools and the table before doing an operation. So there’s no need for you to look like _that_ about it. Now, are we going to do what we came in here to do or am I going to have to point out your hypocrisy by reminding you what state your own work space is in?”

“Uh… what we came in here for.”

“Good, I’ll go get the little bread monsters. You put the spell book on my desk, I cleaned it up a bit.” ‘Cleaned’ was a relative term, it was still a mess but was now an ever so slightly more organized mess. “Combining science and magic to create the ultimate monster will see our names go down in history for centuries.”

“As the bad guys probably,” Engie replied. Not that that was a problem. They were doing it for science, not fame. What other people thought of them and their experiments didn’t matter.

Medic gave Engie a quick kiss on the cheek as he passed by on his way to the other side of his lab where he kept the bread monsters stored. “Bad guys always get remembered longer anyway.”


	4. Scout - Wonder

The wonder on Scout’s face as Engie explained how exactly the teleporters worked, using a pair to aid in his explanation, brought a smile to Engie’s face. Rare was the day he had such an attentive audience. Everyone else on the team was too smart – or in Soldier’s case, too stupid – to be impressed by his inventions or just plain didn’t care. Yes, the intelligent company was always welcome but Engie had the right to occasionally enjoy the fact that he was smarter than the vast majority of the world’s population too, right?

“Okay, I think I kind of sort of understand,” Scout said once the explanation was finished. “I’m too stupid to fully get it but it’s still super cool.”

“Don’t call yourself stupid, you ain’t.”

“I didn’t mean ‘stupid’ in the bad way but more like, ‘I’m so good at everything I don’t got to be smart’.” He chuckled, brushing it off. It wasn’t the first time he’d downplayed his intelligence though. He did it most often when interacting with the smart people on the team, always brushing it off as or with a joke whenever he got called out on it.

“You ain’t dumb. The fact that you even sort of understood my explanation proves it.” Not to mention he’d been curious enough about it to come to Engie’s workshop to ask about it. That was a sign of someone with intelligence. “You just think you’re dumb because you’re hanging out with super geniuses all day.”

Scout frowned, unhappy about being called out. “Nah, my grades were so bad, I _barely_ made it through high school.”

It probably wasn’t Engie’s place to say this considering how many college degrees he had but… “School ain’t always the best way to measure someone’s intelligence especially if they got a learning disability.”

“Yeah well… I don’t have a learning disability.”

“Boy, I seen how you write your letters, I’m pretty sure your dyslexic, especially since your dad is too.”

That gave Scout pause. “Wait, Spy’s dys… whatever that word is? What does that… ‘dis’ word even mean?”

“You honestly don’t know?” And here Engie had been thinking Scout had just been trying to hide it.

“No, of course not. What does it mean? And I have it? Is it going to like kill me or something?”

“No, it ain’t deadly. It’s a learning disability where you mix up letters.” Engie didn’t know a whole lot about it so he probably wasn’t the best person to reveal this to Scout but oh well, too late now.

Scout put his hands together and took a deep breath. “So… what you’re saying is I’m always mixing up letters and stuff because I got this dys-thingy and not ‘cause I’m stupid?”

“’Dyslexic’ and yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

Scout’s resulting look of joy and relief was rather sad. Poor boy had just thought he’d been dumb this whole time. “How do I get rid of it? Can Medic cure it?”

“Uh… it ain’t got cure and can’t be fixed.”

Disappointment clouded Scout’s relief. “Really? That’s no fair.”

“You can like learn to deal with it, I think. I know Spy manages it somehow.”

Scout perked back up. “All right, I’ll ask him then. Thanks for like teaching me stuff, you’re the best.” He then held up his fist for a fist bump.

“Glad to help,” Engie said, fist bumping him.


	5. Heavy - Cold/Warm Blooded

The snow came up to Engie’s _waist_. How was it even _possible_ for snow to be that deep? It _shouldn’t_ be. The sun was even shining for fuck’s sake, no way it should be this cold. And yet here it was.

Even worse was the fact that Engie needed to go out in it. The team’s car had finally given up the ghost – probably because of all the damn snow – about maybe an hour’s walk away from base. They’d called him, _insisting_ he come out and get the car running again and well, he couldn’t exactly leave them standard in this frozen hell especially since they were bringing back the next two weeks’ worth of food. How was he supposed to get to them though?

“Problem?”

Engie turned his head to see Heavy approaching. “Uh… yeah. Scout, Medic, and Pyro got the car stuck on their way back to base from town. I got to go rescue them. I don’t know how though, there’s no way my truck’s going to drive in this.” He gestured towards the snow, grimacing. Sniper’s caravan _definitely_ wouldn’t, leaving them with no other functioning vehicle. They’d been hardcore relying on the company provided van. Engie had done everything he could for it but short of replacing every single part – something he didn’t have the budget nor time for – there was only so much he could do. On the bright side, this should give them grounds to demand a new, _better_ van that worked properly. But first they had to get it and its latest supply run back to base somehow.

“How far away is it?” Heavy asked.

“Uh… not far. Scout said about an hour’s walk, though with how fast he walks sometimes I couldn’t tell you how fat that is exactly.

“We walk then.” Heavy strode over and bent down to pick up Engie’s toolbox from the ground from where he’d placed it upon opening the door and discovering the absurd depth of the snow. He hefted it up onto his shoulder with one arm as if it weighed nothing. “I’ll go first, clear a path.”

Without waiting for a reply, he strode outside. Trudging through snow that deep didn’t seem a problem for him. Which made sense, not only was he much bigger than Engie he also hailed from Russia; surviving the cold and snow was practically in his blood.

“Thanks.” Engie stepped out the door, pulling it closed behind him and started following. Walking in Heavy’s trail was _much_ easier. “I owe you one.”

“Nah, I was going to go for walk anyway. I’ve missed the snow.”

“Ah, I supposed you got company on your walk then.” And Engie didn’t have to trudge through all this nonsense by himself.

“Yes, is good to have company sometimes.”


	6. Sniper - Civilization

The city was big and crowded. Noisy, dirty, and smoggy would also be good ways to describe it. The current pinnacle of human civilization was this and other places like it. Engie was not a fan. He was a country boy, born and raised. Even when attending college, he’d never encountered such a crowded place before.

But as much as he disliked it, the way Sniper hunched in the passenger seat next to him, suggested he disliked it even more. His arms were crossed and he’d pulled his hat down to shade his eyes even further despite the sunglasses he wore underneath.

“You okay?” Engie asked. They had time to talk, something up ahead – probably a bad crash judging by the flashing lights up ahead – had slowed traffic to a near stop. It was loud, horns beeping and the occasional shout filled the air.

Sniper grunted.

“That ain’t much of a response.”

“I hate this,” Sniper said, his words a half grunt. “I want to leave.”

“Yep, me too. There something I can do to help though?”

“Just get us to the hotel quick.”

“I’m doing my best.” There wasn’t anything Engie could do about that. He may be one of the smartest people to ever live but even he couldn’t do much about getting through traffic. “Want to try the radio again?” It had gone out more than an hour ago. He’d forgotten to fix it and the AC before heading out on this mission. He hadn’t even considered it and they were both paying for it now. Not that he’d been given time to anyway.

Sniper only response was another grunt. He did reach for the knob though to switch the radio on. ... Static, no matter which way he tuned all they got was static. Not the soothing kind of static either but the crackling buzzing kind that was liable to drive a man insane if one listened to it for too long. Sniper groaned upon giving up and switching it back off. Engie had never heard him sound so miserable before.

Well, they could continue to sit here in the miserable heat and silence – silence being relative term considering all the obnoxious stressful noise surrounding them, eating away at their sanity – or… “I don’t got my guitar, couldn’t play it right now even if I did, but maybe we could still make our own music to entertain ourselves and get us through this nonsense.”

Sniper lifted his hat a bit to at Engie from underneath it. “That ain’t a bad idea.” It wouldn’t be the first time they’d made music together, they did it all the time in fact, it’d just be the first time they did it without instruments. Give them like two songs and it probably wouldn’t be a problem anymore anyway. “You pick the first song, my brain’s too frazzled to come up with one right now.”


	7. Spy - Speech Deprived

The look on Spy’s face when Engie showed him his stump arm, now wrapped up in a bandage, was priceless even with the mask on. “What the hell happened?” he asked, undisguised worry and concern in his voice.

Engie had to hold back a chuckle. “I cut it off, had Medic help me.”

Spy opened his mouth as if to say something but nothing came out. It might very well be the first time he’d ever been stricken speechless, certainly the first time Engie seen him so. He gapped at if for several seconds before finally finding his voice. “ _Why_?”

“So I can equip that mechanical hand I showed you a couple days ago.” Engie had shown him it without explaining that he’d planned to cut his hand off to equip on himself. Partially because he’d wanted to surprise Spy but also because Spy would’ve tried to convince him _not_ to. “I just got to wait a few days for this to heal up a little, not all the way though, and then I can put it on.”

“You’re _fucking_ insane.”

Now Engie did chuckle, it was too funny not to. Spy rarely got this worked up about anything.

“It is _not_ funny. I can not believe Medic actually _let_ you do that. … Well actually I can because he’s fucking insane too. That doesn’t make it okay though.” He turned around to mutter something in French under his breath, probably swear words, before turning back around to face Engie once more. “Never ever do something like this again, okay?”

“I won’t. Having two mechanical hands would suck pretty hard and would probably hinder more than help me.”

Spy frowned at him, crossing his arms and tapping his foot. “You know I meant more than just your other hand. Don’t cut off either of your feet or an eye or… _anything_ else. I don’t care if it’s for science,” cutting off Engie’s protest even before it could be voiced, “it’s a _fucking_ stupid thing to do, you imbecile.”

His anger was born of a place of worry but that didn’t make his reaction not funny. It’d be rude to laugh too hard though so Engie held it in for now. “I’m sorry dear. I love you, you know that, right?”

“Don’t pull that out right now. You cut off your own _hand_. You’re not bushing that off as nothing and trying to get me to go soft on you by being sweet.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. But there’s nothing that can be done about it now though. Medic’s already taken my hand to be used in one his experiments so quite frankly I actively don’t want it back. So you might as well just let it go, right?”

Spy frowned even harder at him. But his silence said he knew Engie was correct, there was nothing he could do to undo what had already been done. If this even counted as an argument, it was one that was impossible for him to ever win.

“But now that we’ve handled _that_ big reveal, why don’t we find someplace to relax?” Engie hooked his good arm through one of Spy’s and pulled him back towards the exit to his workshop. “I’m finally taking a break from work like you’ve been wanting me to do for a while. I need you to keep me company otherwise I’ll go even _more_ insane than I already am.”

Spy let out a long heavy sigh. “I dread to think of how crazy you’d be then. Fine, let’s find someplace to relax. … Please promise you’ll never hurt yourself like this again though?”

“Fine, I promise I’ll never maim or severely injure myself in the name of science ever again. Happy?”

“Yes, thank you. And I love you too.”


	8. Soldier - Shopping Together

“We need it,” Solider _insisted_. “It is _necessary_ for our war effort.”

Engie frowned at him, holding back a sigh. This is why he didn’t take Solider shopping with him. But it was one of those rare instances when Soldier caught him on his way out and specifically asked if he could come. There was no way Engie could’ve said ‘no’ to him. And how could he have said ‘no’ when Soldier had insisted they buy the store’s entire stock of miniature American flags? Or the bags of butterscotch hard candies? Or the cat sweater intended for his ‘pet’ raccoon. But with _this_ , Engie had to draw the line somewhere.

“Soldier dear, I love you and would do anything for you, you know that, but no, we do not need that much honey,” he said. “A bottle or two is fine but ain’t no one need that much, not even bees or bears.”

“No, we need this much.” Soldier had gotten his own cart and filled it entirely with bottles of honey. In hindsight, when he’d disappeared for more than five minutes, Engie probably should’ve gone looking for him. He could’ve prevented this. “More would actually be better but this is all they have. It will have to do though.”

Engie sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “What would we even use it _for_?”

“We’ll get naked and cover ourselves in it. Then we’ll be too slippery to catch or hold onto, giving us an advantage on the battlefield. Our enemies will never see it coming. We’ll destroy them, blow them to bits and pieces.” Soldier grinned wide, clearly already imaging their blood and honey soaked nude victory. If such a tactic did win them any battles though it be more because a bunch of naked honey covered men would shock and disgust the enemy enough to make them not want to deal with that and thus forfeit. Not exactly a glorious victory. “Then we’ll plant our little American flags in the ground where the enemy once stood.”

If they were only using the company’s money to feed themselves and they had a nigh-on unlimited amount of it, Engie wouldn’t have bothered fighting this. But the budget they were given for food was so tiny that everyone one on the team was forced to pool a portion of their paychecks together to add to it if they didn’t want to live off of military rations, thus Engie couldn’t let this stand. “We can’t afford that much honey so sorry but the answer is still no.”

Soldier gave him a slightly hurt look. “But…”

“No ‘but’s’,” Engie cut him off. “We’re on a mission to buy food for the team.” And a few other necessary items. “Not buy stuff to aid in battle.” Though honey wouldn’t give them much aid at all beyond shock and disgust and most of that would come from the fact that they were naked _and_ covered in honey. “It’s an important mission as you know. And we only have just enough money to buy what we need so we can’t afford all of that honey. If we buy it anyway, we’ll all starve. You understand?”

Soldier stared at him, the cogs in his mind practically visible. “What about… next time we come to the store? Can we get some honey then?”

“Sure, next time we come to the store we can get some honey.” That was a promise Engie could make. Soldier would forget about it in a day or two anyway and if he didn’t, Engie didn’t say just how much honey they would get and could easily get away with only buying a bottle or two.

Another long pause before Soldier let out a heavy sigh. “Very well then, we will follow this mission’s set plan of getting food. I will… put all this back then.”

“Good, I’ll help.” And make sure he didn’t forget where in the store it was supposed to be.


End file.
